Lots of good advice here already so I just thought I'd add a welcome from Atlantic Canada. The Bay of Fundy is a beautiful area. If your house borders the shore, there is a good chance that I have kayaked past it at some point. Not certain as the bay is HUGE but I've done a lot of it.

Nice house and I'm confident that all of the options above will sound excellent in that great room.

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With great power comes Awesome irresponsibility.

@Murph: thanks for the welcome! My wife and I tried kayaking for the first time a few years ago on a guided tour. Just that day the bay decided to be kind of rough, so it was quiet exciting...

Our land extends to the bay, but the house is about 500 feet away from the edge of the land which ends in a cliff, as a lot of the NB coast in that area. We are in West Quaco near Brown's Beach, which you may know.

My wife and I took a bus tour this summer through Nova Scotia and PEI, so we were able to see some of your pretty island.

I also would like to thank everyone for their comments and suggestions. I think for now I am going to go with a 5.1 setup (M22, VP160, EP500, QS8). It will be very nice for starters and I can also add more later!

I have one question, though: what would be the advantage of using an M22 over a VP160 as a center? I like the idea of a VP160 as it seems to be matched with M60s as left and right, which I may upgrade to at some point.

Speaking of upgrading, I will need to prewire for the future. I was going to connect speakers directly to wire coming out of the wall (using pass-through plates). Is there an elegant way to hide currently unused wires? It's not so much a problem in the back, but I like to keep the front, where people are looking, as clean as possible. I don't know if I will ever use height speakers, but one of the comments got me thinking, with heigths being more effective than rear surrounds. Of course, researching further I find people who say they don't notice the effects of heights. BTW, would an M22 be a good height speaker? (In case I upgrade to M60s.)

Re. the center choices, it's a bit a matter of how much off axis performance you need. I don't see that being a big concern in your room layout so I wouldn't worry. Also Some will argue that the horizontal driver layout of sideways center channels, like the VP__s, produces an effect called combing that is considered undesirable. Others will say it's audibly negligible, others (like Axiom's Ian Colquin) might even argue it's benefits. Personally, I can't advise you on this. I will say that I very much like my VP150 and envy the 160s and 180s.

Others will have much more educational answers.

By unused wires do you mean wires that come out of the wall but there is no speaker there yet? If so, what I would do is terminate the wires on a wall plate like this one.Stereo Wall Plate

Then when the time comes, you can plug in speaker wires of the required lengths terminated in banana plugs.

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With great power comes Awesome irresponsibility.

JZ, the advantage would be cost; as I mentioned, the VP160 would be about $300 more. Both employ a vertical tweeter over mid-range design for good horizontal dispersion. In a sense the VP160 can be viewed as an M22 with flanking woofers for greater bass volume and extension.